Biden Assures Nation that the President is a Macho Man

The commentators all seem to think that Vice President Biden goofed with the gaffe that President Obama is virile. Campaigning at New York University April 26, Biden referred to Teddy Roosevelt’s foreign policy that is captured by the phrase “Speak softly (use diplomacy) but carry a big stick (be sure to have a strong military in case diplomacy fails). And then the Vice President looked up from his text and said, very deliberately, “I promise you, the President has a big stick.”

This was not a typical Biden slip of the tongue. It was quite intentional. The Vice President read from a script. He knew exactly what he was saying. He was assuring the nation that their President is manly. How absurd. Some Americans think that the Commander-in-Chief who ordered the destruction of Osama bin Laden is not virile enough to lead the nation. 

It helps explain the irrational perverse and pervasive hatred that some have for the President.  There will always be racists and much of the hatred is the result of this—the Birthers, the people who call him a Muslim (as if that were a criticism), the people who call him (a frustrating centrist) a socialist, a Kenyan, a European…  But there is something else.

The first black President—like Jackie Robinson, the first African-American to play major league baseball—has to be very careful not to lose his temper, not to appear to be an “angry black.” And President Obama does this very well. He is not angry. He is by nature a calm, even-tempered, reassuring person. There is plenty of reason for him to be angry—given the cynical hypocritical and unprincipled opposition he has faced from congressional Republicans. But he isn’t.

It is this very lack of anger—required by his Jackie Robinson-like historical position and engrained in his natural temperament—that has infuriated some Americans.  They hate that he is a metrosexual. They would fear a black man who appeared strong or angry yet they hate a man who eschews violence, would not carry a gun, and lives in an otherwise all female family. Jimmy Carter may have suffered from this same prejudice. Most of our recent presidents have had only daughters but they also drank, hunted, philandered, or did other things to show their manliness. Obama, like Carter, does none of this.

The president is a symbol of the country and many Americans want that symbol to be a Texas rancher or a hunter or a military hero. President Obama just does not fit that bill. And so he is hated both by racists and also by chauvinists and by macho men. Joe Biden cannot do anything to change the president’s skin color but at NYU he did his best to change his image—from mild-mannered professorial collaborator who listens to everyone and seeks a middle path to a man who has a big stick, a man whose manliness defines him, a man who will stick it to you if you get in his way. Biden’s intentional and illuminating comment reflects Obama’s paradox—trying not to look too strong (and thus scary) he appears weak (and thus effeminate) to many of his detractors. No wonder he won’t take on the NRA. No wonder he is not leading the way for gay rights. No wonder he sits adversaries down to a beer. Biden’s remark is, in the end, not reassuring at all. It tells us how far we still have to go in gender identity in this country. It is very sad. 

Blood from a Stone: Happiness and an $838 blood test

My dental hygienist recently noticed that my normally low blood pressure had spiked so she encouraged me to get a check up. I did. It was Flaubert who said that “in order to be happy one must be stupid, selfish, and in good health.” Was my last chance for happiness at risk?

A week later the doctor found nothing abnormal but ordered a battery of blood tests, just to be sure. The bill came this week: $838.20. Closer inspection revealed that, after an “insurance adjustment” for $593.33, I owed “only” $244.87.

I guess I should have been happy. But even that seemed rather high, so I called St. Luke’s to ask about it. Maybe they would have sympathy and lower the bill… or perhaps just accept the “adjustment” from Highmark as full payment.

The hospital official was adamant about my paying the whole thing despite my meek effort to negotiate a lower charge. They wanted full payment but they were willing to let me pay $20/month until it's paid off, with no finance charge. Which I concluded was pretty reasonable of them and was the best deal I was going to get.

But over $800 for blood tests still seemed outrageously high a charge so I went a stop further. I called Highmark, my insurance company, to ask what they thought about St. Luke’s charges. What I learned shocked me.

The official from Highmark explained to me that the insurance adjustment is never paid. St. Luke's only gets the $244.87 they charged me. There was no real $838 fee for analyzing my blood. So I asked Highmark what that $838.20 is doing on the bill. Why imply that is the charge when it really isn't? Highmark's answer: “That is what someone would be charged if they did not have insurance.”

What?!!! I responded. People without insurance are charged over three times more than people with insurance? That is, insured people are only charged about 30% of what uninsured people are charged. And uninsured people have to pay the full, inflated, amount. Yes, she assured me. “That's the way the system works.”

I guess, Flaubert to the contrary notwithstanding, I have little hope for happiness.

School Financing is Unfair and thus un-American

Sometimes fairness and the law are in conflict. Recently the Parkland, Pennsylvania school district devoted  resources to discover that ten children were attending their schools from other districts illegally. This again raises the ongoing issue of how we ought to pay for our children’s public education.

A basic question informs our discussion: should public education be funded primarily by real estate taxes—knowing that this will guarantee school systems in which the children of wealthy home-owners receive greater opportunities for their children than do the children of poorer people?

It is very easy to retreat to a legal argument in the Parkland school district case. The parents were breaking the law and should be made to send their children to schools in the district where they live and pay taxes. This same safe logic applies to undocumented workers who come, mainly from south of our border, looking for work and for a better life for their children. They break the law in crossing that border but they are otherwise by and large good people with the same aspirations for their families as those fortunate enough to have been born here.

The law they broke does not make them criminals in the same way that thieves and murderers and self-appointed block watch stand-your-ground vigilantes and inside-traders and (your get the point) are criminals. In the first case the motives are moral. In the latter cases they are vile.

A story. Rabbi Hillel, who was born around 110 BC, taught the Golden Rule--"That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow." He was too poor to attend school and so he sat outside and listened to lessons through a window. One winter day he had to clear snow from the skylight to see what was going on in class. The teacher noticed the unexpected sunlight--and then Hillel himself--and invited the future rabbi to come down off the roof and join the class. Hillel is said to have studied for 40 years before becoming a rabbi. Today he is known as one of the greatest scholars of all time.

Many readers know The Little Prince, by Antoine de St. Exupery. Another story by this beloved French pilot/writer depicts a well-to-do gentleman walking through the third class car of a train in which many poor children are crammed onto the floor. "What Mozart lies here?" the traveler wonders, "and we'll never find out."

There will always be inequalities because people are all different. But the goal of America should be that these inequalities result from differences in results, not from differences in opportunity. Two children born a mile apart—one in Princeton and one in Trenton—will have profoundly different educations. The child from a wealthy home will have a house filled with electronics and books, afternoons and weekends filled with music lessons and horseback riding, vacations and summers filled with camp and travel. The child of a poor family will have none of this.

Historically it has been our public schools where immigrant children have been given the opportunity to achieve all that America has to offer. But we also have home-born immigrants in our land—people born across invisible borders and held captive there by invisible social structures and institutions that preserve differences of race and class.

Let's fix school financing. And Parkland: fix your priorities; go after bad people first.